Goodbye

This is a strange time of year.

On one hand we are all looking forward to the summer holidays but on the other we are really sad as we have to say goodbye to the wonderful Ducks and Robins. We also say goodbye to the children who are leaving Crabtree. We wish them both lots of happiness and good times in their new schools.

The last two days were really busy (as always). The leavers assembly was wonderful, you could see by how well our children sat that they were as interested as the grown ups in everything that the year children had to sing and say to us. Good luck in the juniors year two! 

We spent some of our time cleaning up and sorting out the reception unit - the children were really helpful especially when it came to moving all of the old sand from the sand pit to the area next to the path - anyone looking in will notice that the rough area is now beautifully covered in bark and now looks much more inviting!   

Our talent show was lovely too. The children confidently shared jokes, dances, karate moves, drumming, poems, songs and lots more with us and we all had a lovely time. 

We would all like to thank you for the very genreous gifts that you gave us at the end of term - you are very kind. Obviously the gifts are greatly appreciated but the books with the children's contributions and the cards and letters are so very special. One child wrote 'Thank you for making me happy' what more can any teacher ask for?

So as this is the final blog for this year we would like to say thank you to all of the children and parents in reception 2010/2011 and to wish you all a fantastic summer holiday. We look forward to seeing the new Woodpeckers and Kingfishers in September - remember that children in all year groups are allowed to hug past teachers!

Look at the fun we had at Bekonscot!

Thank you so much to all the parents that helped.

On Tuesday at 2:00pm it is our Teddy Bear's Picnic!

This week we are going to be writing invitations to the picnic and writing labels for our Teddy Bears so they do not become lost! We are also going to be making cakes and sandwiches for the picnic.

(Please provide your child with a savoury snack)

At the Picnic we will play some circle games, eat our sandwiches and cakes and sing you some Teddy Bear songs!

(Parents of junior children please feel free to come and go)

We look forward to seeing you at the Picnic

Please remember to bring your Teddy and a Picnic blanket!

Bekonscot!

Look what we did when it was hot!

This week we have been making story maps! We made our own story maps (a sequence of pictures) for the story of 'Rosie's Walk'. All the children were able to re-tell the stories using actions and the story map to help them. Here are photographs of our story maps!

Ducks Robins

The children then had a go at making up their own version of the story and changed the characters and the obstacles in the story.

Next week we are going to write our stories using our story maps to help us!

On Monday we are going to Bekonscot Model Village.

http://www.bekonscot.co.uk/

The children are going to look around the village, have a train ride and sketch some of the houses in the Village.

Remember to bring a packed lunch in a named plastic carrier bag with 2 screw top bottles of drink, wear school uniform, comfortable shoes and a waterproof coat!

Next week in Maths we are going to be practicing our addition skills using money, to help us to recognise different coins. We are also going to be recognising and naming 3D shapes and their properties, such as the number of sides/corners they have and if the sides are flat or curved.

Sports Day!

We had SO much fun on our Sports Day!

We all took part in different activities and cheered on all our friends. Here are some photographs of us.

This week we were focussing on 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. The children had great fun learning about the life cycle of the butterfly and we all acted out the sequence of the cycle. We have painted our own symmetrical butterflies using different objects to print with. The children wrote their own versions of the story and changed the food they ate and what they were going to turn into! We learnt lots of interesting facts about butterflies and caterpillars and made our own fact files.

Next week we are going to be learning all about 'Rosie's Walk' by Pat Hutchings. The children are going to learn the story by acting and using a story map. (Writing the story in pictures) We are then going to change the characters and other parts of the story and write our own versions of the story.

The children's new classes have been put on the Newsletter.

Robins are going to be Kingfishers with Miss Bucus

Ducks are going to be Woodpeckers with Miss Vela

Hope to see you tomorrow at the summer fair! (11:30 - 2:30)

What a busy week!

The children have had sooo much fun learning about Australia.

They have sung some Australian songs, heard an Australian Folk Tale, found out what Boomerangs were made for and designed their own, learnt what some Aboriginal signs mean, made their own hats, practiced using Aboriginal art techniques and learnt how to play cricket!

We also learnt an Aboriginal dance from a porfessional dancer.

Thank you to all those who turned up to our picnic, we hope you enjoyed our singing and dancing.

Here are some pictures of us during the week.

Next week we are going to be learning about 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. The children are going to make up their own versions of the story and find out some interesting facts about caterpillars and butterflies.

In maths we are going to be sorting the food from the story, counting in 2's, 5's and 10's and making our own symmetrical butterfly pictures.

We hope you have a lovely long weekend.

A BIG well done to all the children in their water assembly this morning. They were brilliant!

In fact they did so well that each class had 3, yes 3 apples!!!

Here are some photographs.

On Monday it is Green Day - please can everyone add something green to their uniform.

This year we are thinking about the environment and why it is important to look after it.

The children are going to take part in a scavenger hunt around the school grounds, they will collect different natural objects and then share their findings with each other.

We are going to make a flower pot out of recycled materials and plant a bean seed.

We will also be looking closely at trees, we will sketch them and use the bark to make rubbings.

In Maths we are going to be extending our addition skills by putting the biggest number in our head and then counting on. we will also be thinking about doubling and halving numbers.

In Literacy we are going to be concentrating on our key words and how to write super sentences.

On Friday afternoon we will be practicing for sports day, so please make sure that your children have a pair of trainers or plimsolls that fit!

Have a lovely weekend.

Half Term!

This week we have been doing lots of learning!
In literacy we have been thinking of our own ways to start stories and sequencing the story of 'Mr Gumpy's Outing'.

In Maths we have been learning about subtraction and how the numbers become smaller when we take away.

We have aslo looked at irons and how they worked and how they used to look before electricity. The children were asked to differentitate between past and present.

Here are some photographs from this week.

In the first week back after half term we have our class assembly. We will be doing a lot of practice for our assembly.

Can the children please bring in one cap each as we will be using them in our assembly.

Does anyone have any small plastic bottles with lids that we can use in our Role Play?

Next half term there are lots of fun and exciting things happening. We have Green Day, Sports Day, Cultural Week and our School trip.

We hope you have an enjoyable and fun half term!

We have had great fun this week learning the story of "Mr Gumpy's Outing". The children have taken on the role of the different characters and acted out the story.

In maths we have experimented with scales and compared the weight of different objects using the key words, 'heavy' and 'light'.

In creative we have learnt how to change the shade of a colour by mixing in small amounts of white paint.

This week we are going to be carrying on our learning using the story of Mr Gumpy. We are going to think of our own ways to start a story (including a setting and a character) and sequence the story too.

In Maths this week we are going to be learning the main concept of subtraction and having a go at some practical subtraction sums.

We are also going to try to differentiate between past and present and find out clothes used to be ironed and put them on a timeline.

We hope you have a good weekend!

Water

Last week we had lots of fun exploring water.

We learnt how clothes used to be washed; using a washboard to scrub the clothes, how the dolly and poser washed the clothes in the water and how a mangle was used to dry the clothes. The children have had great fun using the artefacts and washing some clothes themselves.

In Literacy we wrote instructions on how to use the artefacts.

We have also conducted a floating and sinking investigation and found out which objects float and sink.

This week we are using the story 'Mr Gumpy's Outing' by John Burningham. We are going to sequence the story and write a character profile on our choosen character.

We are also going to use our investigating skills and find out how many marbles it will take to sink a paper boat.

In creative we are thinking about colour mixing to change the shade of one specific colour by adding a little bit of white paint.

Don't forget to order your photographs.

Sorry due to a problem with blog this week we are unable to load any photos.

Royal Wedding!

WOW! What a busy and fun 2 days we have had!

We have been creative and made crowns for our 'playground party', been musical and learnt new songs to sing at our party, made a memory mat so we always remember exactly what we were doing at the time of the Royal Wedding and dressed up in red, white and blue for our playground party!

Here are some photographs of us enjoying our party.

This half term we are going to be focusing on water. Next week we are going to learn where we find water: rivers, taps and rain; what we use water for: drinking and washing and the different noises that water can make. We are going to be experimenting with different objects in the water to create sounds and then have a go at writing the sounds we hear. In creative we are going to be making wax resist water pictures using wax crayons and Brusho.

We hope you have a lovely long weekend and enjoy the Wedding!

Next Term!

A BIG thank-you to all the parents and helpers on our school trip to Mill Green.

We had lots of fun and learnt lots of exciting new things. The Miller told us all about the Mill and how the water wheel turns the cogs to grind the wheat into flour. We used the flour to bake some bread, made shakers with the wheat and made our own badges!

Here are some photographs of us on our first school trip!

After Easter we have a 2 day week (Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th).

On these 2 days we will be taking part in activities associated with the Royal Wedding. We are going to be making our own crowns and tiaras using finger paints, making our own bunting for a playground/street party on Thursday afternoon and making our own memory mat to record information about ourselves such as our friends, favourite colour and which class we are in.

We hope you all have a restful Easter Break!

Mill Green Museum!

This week we had a special treat! Mrs Coates (Gracie’s Mum) came into school on Thursday and taught us some Monkey Music. We all had a go at singing, dancing and playing a drum in different ways - tapping, rolling,scratching adn banging! We made lots of noise and had lots of fun!

Next week we are going to be really busy as it is the last week of term and it’s our school trip! We will be reading the story about The Little Red Hen, discussing the characters and sequencing the events in the story. We are looking forward to our trip to Mill Green Museum (thank you so much to all of the parent helpers who volunteered to come with us.) We will be listening to the miller who will explain all about how to grind wheat, making our own bread and making badges and shakers!

We will be carrying on learning about adding and the number bonds to 5 and 10.

As we investigated with magnets last week we are going to be taking our learning forward by investigating the different materials in our classroom and trying to describe them.

We will learn about Easter and how it is a special time of year to some people and we are going to make some chocolate nests and notice the changes that happen to the ingredients - there may be a treat in the nest!!!

Spring Time!

Thank you to everybody who came to watch our assembly.

The children did really well and made us all proud.

This week we have been really busy with rehearsing for our assembly, but have had time to go on a spring walk.

Here are some pictures of the signs of Spring which we found.

Next week we are going to be thinking about Mother's Day and how special our families are. We are also going to be thinking about magnets and investigating which materials are magnetic.

Assembly

This week we have been very busy making fruit kebabs, learning how to stay healthy and planting cress seeds.We had great fun laughing at what we wore for Red Nose Day!!

Here are some photographs of us making our fruit kebabs.

Next week we are going to be doing a lot of rehearsing for our assembly on Friday! We will be practising how to use loud voices as well as our acting skills. We have already started to learn a song too! We hope that you are able to come and watch us in our first ever school assembly.

We will also be learning about the seasons, signs of spring in our local environment and in maths we will be learning which numbers are 1 more or 1 less than a given number.

Tadpoles!

A big thank-you to everyone who came to our Fair trade Cafe, we raised just over ₤95.

Now we have some Frogspawn in Reception which have already hatched out of the eggs and turned into little Tadpoles. Some of us have looked really closely at them in ChIL and have drawn pictures and added information to them for our Reception Tadpole Diary.

This week we have had good fun acting out the story of The Enormous Turnip and looking closely at vegetables.


Next week in KUW (Knowledge and Understanding of the World) we are going to be planting cress and finding out the best conditions for it to grow. We are also going to find out the best way for us to stay healthy and how it is important to eat, drink water, exercise and sleep to stay healthy as well as thinking about our personal hygiene. At the end of the week we are going to make our own fruit skewers, working really hard on our fine motor control and being really careful when cutting the fruit with the knives.

I'm sure we will love eating them afterwards!

The Enormous Turnip!

We had great fun dressing up on World Book Day!

We made a class dictionary and had a book read to us in Polish.

This term we are focussing on Traditional Tales and we are going to be learning the story of 'The Enormous Turnip'. We are going to remember the sequence to help us to act out the story.

We are also going to do observational drawings of different vegetables and make sure we look really closely at all the detail.

As it is our Fairtrade Cafe on Thursday we are going to be learning about Fairtrade and using Fairtrade cotton to make bunting. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible - bring lots of money!

Half Term

This week in Reception we have been very busy! We have cut scales, out of colour mixing swatches for the Rainbow Fish display (using our cutting skills and overlapping skills), made Treasure Maps out of the PE equipment (Creative Development) and have been looking at the changes to our environment (Knowledge and Understanding of the World).

Here are some photographs of our Treasure Maps.

The first week back after half term is World Book Week and we are concentrating on Information books. We are going to be finding out about dictionaries and each class in the school will be making their own one. Don't forget to dress up as something from an information book on Thursday 3rd March.

After half term our main focus is going to be on Traditional Tales. The children will learn some Tradition Tales and use them in all areas of the curriculum in different ways. We even have a trip booked to Mill Green Museum to meet the miller and find out how to make bread, just like in the Little Red Hen!

We hope you have a restful half term!

Teddies and Friends

Thank you to all our parent helpers this week. Hope everybody enjoyed the Tea Parties.

Please remember to bring in a Soft Toy on Monday next week for our learning. They will be returned on Friday. It would be really useful if we could get a wide variety of different soft toys to use.

Have a good weekend.

Welcome to the Reception Class Blog

Friday 18th February - 9.15 Whole School Assembly, All Parents welcome